South African poet and playwright, many of whose poems have extraordinary sensitivity and brilliant imagery.

Butler began writing during military service in North Africa and Europe (1940–45). After studying at the University of Oxford, he joined the faculty of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, and from 1953 to 1978 headed the school's English department. He studied and edited diaries of colonial settlers and edited an influential magazine of contemporary poetry, New Coin, but he was also considerably involved in the theatre. His first play, The Dam (1953), took a prize at the Van Riebeeck Festival, and subsequent verse dramas include The Dove Returns (1954), Take Root or Die (1966), and Cape Charade (1967). Stranger to Europe (1952) contains some of Butler's first poetry. Other poetry volumes include Selected Poems (1975; rev. ed., 1989), Songs and Ballads (1978), and Pilgrimage to Dias Cross (1987). In 1989 he edited (with Jeff Opland) The Magic Tree, a collection of 119 narrative poems translated from several South African languages and chosen for their South African setting. His nonfiction work includes The Prophetic Nun (2000), which chronicles the lives of several nuns, and three volumes of autobiography, Karoo Morning (1977), Bursting World (1983), and A Local Habitation (1991).